Large rats are benign and will flee from conflict, but dwarves will generally react violently to their presence, leading to them often getting beaten to a pulp by your peasants before they have the chance to cause any trouble. These creatures can be captured with cagetraps very easily, as a food stockpile with a couple pieces of food can be used as lure. Once captured, they can be turned into fairly valuable pets, though due to their very short lifespan (no more than 3 years), they make poor companions to dwarves and are better off being butchered.

Clothing made from large rat leather have names that can sound awkward due to the way the game handles sizes for different creatures. A dwarf sized tunic is called a large rat leather tunic. A tunic made for bigger creatures like a human would be called a large large rat leather tunic. A tunic made for a smaller creature like a kobold would be called a small large rat leather tunic.